Freshly Spilled Thoughts

Take a look at this…

At first glance it doesn’t look very sexy. There’s no sign of any stocking tops or anyone cavorting around in this image.

So what is it?

It’s a strategy game called Utopia that I used to play at my mates house when I was a kid. He had a computer called an Aquarius, which sounded somehow exotic to me back then.

I looked this game up again recently to relive it in some way and it looked so basic, I wondered how we stayed so enthralled by it back then.

But it hooks you in, like a novel with a shit cover which you dismiss at first, but when you start reading it you just can’t stop.

I’ve got a feeling it would be the same today. You see, form is temporary and class is permanent.

You don’t need to be flashy to have class, you just need the right ingredients.

Utopia had this. It may not look like much now, but back then it was a well spent Saturday afternoon.

If you found all that really boring, perhaps I can interest you in Jennifer Lopez being an absolute perv instead…

In a funny way, this post had something for everyone 🙂

On that note, have a great rest of your day and Happy Halloween. I’m outta here.

Do you believe all good things come to an end?

Do you believe in life after love?

(just an excuse to throw in a Cher song line there)

Do you believe that it all depends on what you believe in?

(Desmond Dekker that time)

Do you believe that if you can conceive it the mind can achieve it?

Do you believe in marshmallows? (someone’s got to)

Do you believe in not taking life too seriously because ultimately we’re all food for worms anyway

(Dead Poets Society that time)

Do you believe I’ve never been beaten in an arm wrestle?

Do you believe that Santa drinks alcohol and then irresponsibly delivers presents whilst under the influence?

One more thought after this and I gotta go for the night. Time waits for no man.

I love Autumn. I love Halloween, and I love things that go ‘bump in the night’ 👻🦇.

“See you on the broom tonight“, my mum would say.

My grandmother used to agree and say the same thing, so as a little kid I half-wondered if she had some flying superpowers she wasn’t telling me about. Was my nan a witch? 🧹lol

I used to ask my grandfather what happened to all his hair and he’d reply, “Oh, your grandmother ate it while I was asleep.”

I knew he was joking. Surely. Wasn’t he!?

Have a spooktastic Halloween.

Trick or Treat? 🎃

Side Note:  Don’t give apples to kids, if they ring your doorbell tonight. They’re only there for the sweets 🍬.

I gave an apple to a kid one Halloween, when I’d run out of cavity chobblers.

“Here’s an apple, it will keep the doctor away“. Might as well have given him a bottle of disappointment 🙂

A few years ago now, a family member of mine went to a music class. In the class there was a bloke who had penned a few songs himself in the past. Not only that, he was once the lead vocalist in a group you may have heard of…

Duran Duran.

This guy later got replaced by Simon Le Bon, but he had a hand in writing the hit “Girls On Film” and possibly “Rio” as well.

Back in those days, this guy just wanted a new keyboard so he signed a waiver to any rights he may have otherwise had for about 600 quid in £50 notes.

As far as possible future riches went, he was done up like a kipper. They even paid him to give Simon singing lessons, which is like paying the sorceror to train the apprentice so he may replace you.

The Moral Of This Tale:

In life if you’re not the pigeon, you’re the statue.

Let’s play this out with a bit of Girls On Film…

What’s that? A chink of sunlight, no less.

You’ve made it to Thursday and somehow the day feels lighter.

Hump day Wednesday is now a blur in the rear view mirror as you change from 3rd to 4th gear, racing towards the weekend.

It’s still a long stretch of road ahead, but you’re well on the way.

On Days Like These by Matt Monro begins to play.

You put on your Ray Bans and smile. Aint nothin’ to it but to do it…

This is an old video of a guy in Tynemouth who was clearly having a mental episode at the time of a quick shopping expedition (and for that he certainly has my sympathy so I’m in no way making fun of him). Absolutely one of life’s characters who just needed a bit of help.

I’m only posting it because he somehow still manages to walk the line of classic comedy…

Lines such as:

“are you going to put it on the dark net”

“all I want is some some cat treats”

“I’ll set the cats on yer” (you can’t tell me he wasn’t aware of the comic genius in this riposte)

and

“what’s it got to do with you big ears?”

Are priceless lines. They should give him a knighthood (he also looks like the long lost twin of Vic Reeves)…

Here’s what I thought of this video when I first saw it back in 2020…

I had a strange dream last night. I’d been away for a few days and when I came back I went out to check on rabbits (which I don’t own). The rabbit hutch (which doesn’t exist in real life) and the front was missing off it. WTF.

The rabbits were happily doing what rabbits do and no harm had come to them, so I put the front of the rabbit hutch back on again (as you do).

I then thought to myself, “Who’s been feeding these rabbits in my absence? They need food.”

Logically these plans would have been made before going away, but this was a dream, therefore no rules from the mortal realm applied.

In my dream I had to go and get food for them. It was at this point I thought, “Well, where would I go for such a thing?”

In my conscious state, the answer is obvious of course: “A Pet Food Shop”… as I write this now, the most basic of solutions is mentally displayed in bright neon. Why do dreams play you like this and cast you as an extra in Dumb and Dumber? 🙂

Even someone as thick as me in a dream, realised that I couldn’t actually have rabbits if I didn’t know where to get the bloody food from.

“There’s a bloke sitting at a bus stop, I’ll ask him“, would have probably been my next port of call.

I woke up from my semi-lucid dream, sporting a dead arm and a hand that felt like it had been stitched on by Dr. Frankenstein. There’s nothing more warming to the cockles, than that of a limb which no longer responds to you until circulation kicks in again.

If your hand was called Gordon (why would it be, I know.. and if it were what would the other hand be called? It raises more questions than answers) you’d start shouting something like “Gordon is alive“, as your hand once again began responding to the power of thought. Obviously, you’d shout this rather quietly so as not to wake up anyone else.

Let’s all have a bit of decorum around here.

And so, here I am. I’m not going to look up why I am dreaming about rabbits, but there is surely a reason.

Time for coffee.

I did my big exertion experiment and so far it seems like it paid off. That’s the thing with exertion when you’re under the weather, it’s either going to make you worse or it makes the immune system rally.

I proved this point about 10 years ago when I was incapacitated for 15 days (long story). When I had enough strength to walk further than half a road, I went training. Most people would have regarded this as sheer lunacy, but it worked and something in my system kicked in again.

A few days later I was more or less back to normal after being completely out of the game for nearly 3 weeks. I’m talking ‘holy shit, this thing is never going to end’ level of incapacity.

I have this theory that nature knows, you see. You either serve a purpose in the grander scheme of things or it makes room for something else.

There’s a guy called Greg Valentino (funny guy) and he tells people to ‘jerk off’ because nature knows. Normally I would laugh, but I actually think there is some sort of logic in the ‘no filter’ comedy.

At the time of writing I feel human again.

It’s always fatal going to the shops afterwards though as my brain then believes I deserve a reward. Lions think they deserve a gazelle and I think I deserve raspberry yoghurt lollies. Surely you burn a gazillion calories in 80 minutes anyway, right?

Well, I’d like to think it’s gazillion. It’s probably more like 300 calories, which you put back on after eating anything more than what Twiggy used to shovel down her neck for brunch.

As Joanna Lumley said, “Instead of burning off the cake, just don’t eat the cake.”

Now I love Joanna, but not eating cake makes Jack a dull boy.

I’m embracing the whole yin and yang concept. Anyway yeah, good – exertion is currently winning.

I’ve had one of those annoying colds that doesn’t make you feel really ill, but still stops you from doing things requiring maximum exertion. Women call it ‘man flu’. I call it, “the end of the world as we know it”.

For example, whilst suffering with such an affliction, if someone said, “Do you want to climb Mount Everest today, then when we reach the top we can pound our chests and swiftly run back down to the bottom after consuming Red Bull?”

I’d reply with, “Not today, but I wouldn’t say no to a stroll at a leisurely pace if it involves a cone of chips as a reward at the end.”

That kind of thing.

The local doctor is a bit like Mr. Magoo on a bad day. If you go to him for practically anything, he just tells you to breathe in the vapours of menthol crystals or he gives you amoxycillin.

I am sort of convinced that to be a doctor all you need to do is be able to spell amoxycillin (apparently that’s the UK spelling anyway). Since I can do this, just call me Dr. Dean.

Going back to the supposedly qualified ‘quack’…

If your leg was hanging off he’d tell you to do the same thing.

“Doctor. I seem to have lost a leg and I’m not quite sure where I put it, but I’m sure I had it this morning.”

“Try these crystals. Breathe them in and let the healing powers of them wash over you. After that just spin anti clockwise until you are so dizzy you can’t find your way back here.”

“Thanks Doc. I’ll let you know if I regrow a new leg by Thursday.”

So rather than go to him, I filled a bowl up with hot water and used Olbas Oil instead of crystals, which is the next best thing.

I wasn’t expecting much, but it does work to a degree. I had the best nights sleep in ages and today I am going to risk exerting myself later. Wish me luck.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll want to settle down. Until tomorrow I’ll just keep moving on…

What if The Littlest Hobo just couldn’t find his front door keys.

“There he goes again, without his keys. Thanks for your help, Littlest Hobo. Don’t forget you’re contracted to do 12 episodes.”

Gooodd morrnninngggg Vietnam.

You got a window? Open it.

Or if that’s too cold for you at the end of October, hug a gorilla instead…

I’ll leave it with you.

My grandfather was in the second World War but he didn’t talk about it very often.

If I ever asked him what he did in the war he would reply, “I was the one who made the doughnuts”.

I never knew if he was just joking or whether he did actually make the doughnuts as well.

As a kid I think I thought it was pretty cool that my grandfather knew how to make doughnuts.

He never missed a beat, going to work for 50 years and he was the least materialistic person I’ve ever known.

He was happy if he had an old TV to watch and a few teabags to make the next brew with.

If I hurt my arm or leg, he’d bring out a rusty old saw and say, “Which one is it? Let me know and I’ll cut it off for you”.

My great aunt used to say, “You shouldn’t do that to kids, Bob. They don’t understand.”

I did though. I got his humour, it’s the same as mine.

I never heard him moan, whinge or complain about his life. I never heard him feeling sorry for himself, even when he lost vision in one eye and his heart was failing.

My grandfather was the living embodiment of the expression, “salt of the earth”, and always will be MY HERO.

I can talk with the best of them, but deep down I’m a thinking man that enjoys my own peace and quiet. Or to put it in a more eloquent way, “I enjoy diving into my own pool of quiet contemplation”.

I wasn’t really talkative until I got into my late teens, so I grew up knowing what it was to spend significantly more time listening than talking.

A lot of people I know, who only see me being ‘chatty’ in company don’t realise this about me and probably never will.

Side Note: Some people think they are good listeners, but really they are just gob shites who enjoy talking about themselves.

That sort of amuses me, that you can know certain people for so long and they never REALLY know you.

That’s okay with me, most people are so consumed with their own lives they haven’t got time to really understand another person. They also feel better pigeon-holing someone else instead of considering the fact people are capable of being multi-faceted.

Just because someone is capable of being very talkative in social settings does not mean they are an empty vessel. I’ve met plenty of empty vessels in my time and I know the difference.

It works both ways I guess…

Anyway, today I just wanted to share the words of Plato with you:

Wise men speak because they have something to say.

Fools speak because they have to say something.

On that note, have a great rest of your day.

The author, Harper Lee is a curious one.

She wrote and published a book called “To Kill A Mockingbird”, which was adapted to film (starring Gregory Peck, no less).

After that she never published anything else outside of essays, unless of course you count “Go Set a Watchman” ,which was basically an early draft of “To Kill A Mockingbird” (so I don’t really count it). I half-believe assertions I’ve read online that she was somehow strong-armed into the publication of the latter ever seeing light of day. I guess we’ll never know the definitive answer to that, will we?

I read somewhere that this book generated something like £25 million over time, so it’s not like Harper Lee was ‘hard up’ in any way. Quite a nice life really isn’t it. Pen a book, help with the screen-play and then spend the rest of your life in relative obscurity whilst also being almost as rich as Croesus.

That’s a big “winning at life” in the book of Dean.

I read she was once good friends with Truman Capote, who got ‘well jell’ at the runaway success of her first novel.

Now, nearly 10 years on from her death, they’ve released a set of short stories she wrote in her youth and rather charmingly called the collection, “The Land Of Sweet Forever”.  I’m not sure she would have approved of the publication, but it’s here all the same.

Now I’m a sucker for a short story or two, but I’m not sure how much this set of stories would grip me. I’m still tempted to pick up a limited first edition of this though.

Will I ever read it? Dunno…

So yeah, I got attacked by a seagull yesterday. At the park by me there is a big pond with a shit load of seagulls hanging around. Sometimes I think it’s a youth centre for seagulls.

Anyway, I took bread with me to feed the ducks but they had all gone somewhere else. Rumour has it they were at the local pub down the road. Since I’d brought the bread with me anyway I thought it would be rude not to feed the seagulls.

It all started off well. I threw a few pieces in the air and they caught them in mid flight. Kinda cool.

Next thing I knew there was what I would regard as a “Seagull Call to Arms” and about 100 of the things started circling me. At first I quite enjoyed this bird groupie attention until it got out of hand and one attacked me by bouncing off my head.

At this point my mind flashed to a scene out of “Birds” by Alfred Hitchcock and I rapidly went off the things. Even as I was walking away, they kept flying quite literally less than a metre away from my head.

Fuck the Seagulls from now on. I’m going to give my bread to more deserving winged creatures.

Amazing eyesight though. Imagine if Seagulls played darts. They’d be better than Eric Bristow in his prime.

I’m not going to pretend to know much about Williams S Burroughs. I’ve never read any of his books and I certainly didn’t know much about his life, but one thing that really does interest me is his take on magic vs science.

I instinctively know he was onto something. Now I am not saying he was 100% correct but Science doesn’t know it all either. Magic is a real thing as far as I’m concerned and I believe that power exists within all of us.

The transmutation from thoughts into tangible reality is a magic of sorts as well. We can manifest that which we believe in and it begins with what we conceive within our own minds. If that isn’t magic, then I don’t know what is.

Burroughs also used to practice putting curses upon people (sounds like a nice guy). One can take this sort of thing too far but I know someone else who believes they wield this power to exact such a thing. I shall not bother trying to convince you one way or the other and if I told you the full story, you would not believe me anyway.

Some interesting stuff from Wiki by Burroughs:

“In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. The dogma of science is that the will cannot possibly affect external forces, and I think that’s just ridiculous. It’s as bad as the church. My viewpoint is the exact contrary of the scientific viewpoint. I believe that if you run into somebody in the street it’s for a reason. Among primitive people they say that if someone was bitten by a snake he was murdered. I believe that.” ~ Source: Wikipedia

and this:

“The underlying assumption of magic is the assertion of “will” as the primary moving force in this universe – the deep conviction that nothing happens unless somebody or some being wills it to happen. To me this has always seemed self evident … From the viewpoint of magic, no death, no illness, no misfortune, accident, war or riot is accidental. There are no accidents in the world of magic.” ~ Source: Wikipedia

Well last night was very exciting. The Cinderella Man story continues!

I got attacked by a seagull today, which was a bit shocking but I survived.

More on that another time…

I love street art (art in general actually) and I bumped into this on a wall today, so I thought I’d take a photo of it before some no-talent ass clown sprays over it with the art skills of a drunk person holding a crayon.

Behold the autumnal scene that inspired me to stop and take a photo so it can be admired as intended…

I’m a big fan of the animated cartoon series, Bob and Margaret. The first two series nail being quintessentially British and middle-aged.

They did this short cartoon before that. It’s 8 ish minutes long and it’s about this old bloke called George who big-time fancies the woman across the road. Can someone tell me why she leaves a goldfish bowl (with fish in) outside the house whenever she goes out…

This psychedelic rap masterpiece by Nas, called “The World Is Yours”, always makes me feel both optimistic and wistful at the same time…

“Born alone, die alone, no crew to keep my crown or throne, I’m deep by sound alone.”